


A Quiet Night In

by SonicZephyr



Category: Golden Girls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonicZephyr/pseuds/SonicZephyr
Summary: It's a cold and drizzly Saturday evening, and Dorothy just wants to spend it curled up on the sofa with an old detective novel. Someone interrupts.
Relationships: Blanche Devereaux & Dorothy Zbornak
Comments: 16
Kudos: 12





	A Quiet Night In

It’s a Saturday night, cold and drizzly, the air holding the kind of unbearable chill that is rare in Florida. It’s a nostalgic kind of weather, the kind that makes Dorothy think of growing up in New York, of getting bundled up in a scarf and mittens and trudging to school through a thick layer of greying slush. Even back then, she got cold easily. Winter evenings were spent as close to the radiator as possible, with two pairs of thick socks on her feet and a pulpy detective novel to keep her company. 

The only things different between then and now were her age and the awful ache that would settle into her joints if she stayed out in the cold for very long. Tonight, Dorothy is curled up on the couch in her comfiest flannel nightgown with a fluffy throw blanket around her shoulders and a worn copy of _The Big Sleep_ in her lap. Even though she’s read the book about a hundred times, Philip Marlowe’s search for the truth through the dark and gritty streets of 1930s L.A. always sucks her back in. 

> _Her small firm chin turned slowly. Her eyes were the blue of mountain lakes. Overhead, the rain still pounded, with a remote sound, as if it was somebody else’s rain._

Dorothy sips her cooling tea and turns the page. 

> _How do you feel?” It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll’s house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it._

The front door swings open and Blanche storms in, letting a burst of biting wind before she has the chance to slam it shut. Dorothy tugs the blanket tighter around her, marking her spot in the book with her thumb. 

“What a waste of a Saturday night!” Blanche says as she strips off her coat and throws it haphazardly over the back of a chair. Her eyes might be the blue of mountain lakes, but her face is beet red. Her usually silvery voice has a distinct shudder to it, like a bow skipping across the strings of a violin. 

“Are you okay?” Dorothy asks, watching Blanche kick off her shoes with less care than she usually takes. “Were you crying?”

“Crying?” Blanche repeats, pressing her palms against her cheeks. “God no, that’d mean my date was anything other than dull, dull, _dull_. It’s absolutely _freezing_ out there, Dorothy. I’m surprised my skin’s not chipping away like a porcelain doll!”

She expects Blanche will elaborate on just how _dull_ her date was, but instead she hurries off in the direction of her bedroom. Dorothy cracks her book back open, dropping right back into the room where Mona Grant is defending the love of her life to an incapacitated Marlowe. The immersion is soon broken, however, by Blanche plopping down on the sofa next to her no more than five minutes later, clad in a plunging satin nightgown and a flowing robe cinched loosely at the waist. 

“You’re not gonna believe what John did,” she says, tucking her legs beneath her and tugging at the edge of Dorothy’s blanket. “Let me in.”

“If you’re cold, you should’ve put on more clothes,” Dorothy says, batting away Blanche’s hand. “Or brought your own blanket.”

“Oh, don’t be cruel.” Blanche pouts, rubbing her arms through the thin fabric of her sleeves. “The fastest way to warm up is by being beside another person, you know? And the heater was broken in John’s car, so I might as well have been sitting outside for the past hour. If _you_ were the one sitting here with chattering teeth, I’d share my blanket in a heartbeat.”

Dorothy rolls her eyes and lifts an arm, Blanche immediately scoots closer, clutching her stolen portion of the blanket with the sort of self-satisfied smile of a playground tattletale.

“Thank you, Dorothy,” she says, her accent dripping off each word, followed by a contented little hum. She reaches across to tilt the book in her direction, her fingers brushing across Dorothy’s arm in the process. Her touch is genuinely icy, instantly causing goosebumps to break out across Dorothy’s skin. She’s half tempted to gather up Blanche’s hands in her own and breathe some warmth back into them, but Blanche ruins it by saying, “You’re reading one of those old detective stories again? Don’t you ever get sick of them?”

“Sick of them?” Dorothy asks, affronted. “Are you kidding me? I have read every word Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler ever wrote. Their characters might as well be a part of me at this point. Asking me that question is like me asking you if you ever get sick of sleeping around.”

“Well, there’s a chance for something new and exciting to happen when I go on a date,” Blanche says. “Whereas you are reading the same thing for the eight hundredth time. Your private eye is always gonna solve the case, but my date might take me on a private jet or he might light my soul aflame with unbridled desire in the backseat of Pontiac. Or… he might drive around his old neighborhood pointing out the houses of people I neither know nor care about instead of taking me anywhere good.”

“Oof, is that really what happened tonight?”

“An _hour,_ Dorothy,” Blanche says, dropping her head against Dorothy’s shoulder. “We didn’t get drinks, we didn’t kiss. He didn’t even turn on the radio. We just crawled through some suburb while he pointed at houses saying, ‘Oh, that’s where my fifth grade teacher lived.’ I had my dress hiked all the way up my thighs and he tells me, ‘That blue house was where Mark lived.’ Who the hell is Mark? Why are we talking about him instead of looking at my legs?”

Blanche sighs and shakes her head, absently petting the soft throw at her shoulder. 

“I expected a cozy night spent in the company of a gentleman, and now I’m stuck at home with you and your boring ol’ book, half-frozen and frustrated and just… ugh.”

“I expected a night in the company of my favorite book, and now I’m stuck with you sucking all the heat out of me like a human popsicle.” 

Blanche goes quiet for a while, seemingly off in her own head, and Dorothy takes the opportunity to reopen her book. She only gets a few sentences in before Blanche says, “Dorothy?”

Dorothy lets out a long sigh and snaps the book shut. “What, Blanche?”

“I know I keep interrupting you and you must hate me for it,” she says, “But I was sort of hoping you’d tell me what you like so much about those old noirs. They’re just so bleak and besides, you already know how the mystery wraps up. What keeps you going back?”

“They’re just cool,” Dorothy says, turning the book over in her hands. “How do you describe what makes an entire genre good? A lot of it’s nostalgia, sure, a lot these books fell into my hands at a very formative time of life. There’s a lot wrong with them when you reread - massive holes in the mysteries, like who killed the chauffeur? It’s never explained. Or the racism, the sexism, the corruption of the law…But what can be cooler than a man in a trench coat trailing a criminal down a dark and rainy street? Femme fatales in slinky dresses strolling into smokey P.I. offices? Gangsters and gun fights and car chases, detectives with strict moral codes and cynical views of the world. It’s all just so… so cool!”

Blanche bursts into laughter and Dorothy can’t help but clutch the book protectively to her chest. “What? What did I say?”

“You’re just a massive dork, you know that?” Blanche says once the giggles taper off. “You sound just like a schoolgirl gushing over her best beau. It’d almost say it’s cute seeing you get all worked up over a book.”

“Get your own blanket,” Dorothy says, tugging the blanket off of Blanche and wrapping it securely around herself. 

“Hey! I said it’s cute!” Blanche rises on her knees a little, shakes Dorothy by her shoulder. “That’s a good thing! You could stand to be a little cute more often! Now let me back under; I was comfy!”

“I was comfy before _someone_ came home and started criticizing my taste in books,” Dorothy says, side-eyeing her. “You burst in here like you own the place-”

“I _do_ own the place.”

“-you complain about your date and the weather and ruin any immersion I had in the story, and then you want me to share my blanket?”

“For one thing, I know for a fact that I am your very best friend,” Blanche says. “You’re not gonna stay mad at me. For another, it’s your enthusiasm that got me laughing, not the book itself. It _does_ sound cool. You sucked me in. I give.”

“Fine.” Dorothy lets go of the blanket and, once again, Blanche settles into her side. She pats Dorothy’s arm and smiles, her skin feels warm.

“Why don’t you gimme a taste of your oh-so-cool book, hm?” she asks. “Pick a good part, anything you think I’d like.” 

“You’ve got a very narrow range of interests, Blanche,” she says, thumbing through the pages. “You want a kissing scene or a kissing scene?”

“Hmm, a very tough choice,” she says, grinning up at her. “How about the second one?”

Dorothy clears her throat, momentarily debates on taking a sip of her now cold tea, and begins reading aloud in a low voice:

> _Under the thinning fog the surf curled, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness._

Blanche drops her head back against Dorothy’s shoulder, closing her eyes and letting out a soft hum.

> _I tightened my arms and lifted her up. I brought her face slowly up to my face. Her eyelids were flickering rapidly, like moth wings. I kissed her tightly and quickly. Then a long slow clinging kiss. Her body began to shake in my arms._
> 
> _“Killer,” she said softly, her breath going into my mouth._

Blanche shifts and Dorothy’s lips twitch up into a smile.

> _I kept on kissing her. After a long time she pulled her head away enough to say: “Where do you live?”_
> 
> _“Hobart Arms. Franklin near Kenmore.”_
> 
> _“I’ve never seen it.”_
> 
> _“Want to?”_
> 
> _“Yes,” she breathed._
> 
> _“What has Eddie Mars got on you?”_
> 
> _Her body stiffened in my arms and her breath made a harsh sound. Her head pulled back until her eyes, wide open, ringed with white, were staring at me. “So that’s the way it is,” she said in a soft, dull voice._
> 
> _“That’s the way it is. Kissing is nice, but your father didn’t hire me to sleep with you.”_

“Oh, that’s an awful tease!” Blanche huffs, knocking her shoulder into Dorothy’s. “Something more’s gotta happen, right? What’s the second kiss? You’re not holding out on me, are you?”

“Maybe,” Dorothy says simply, closing the book and pressing her hands against the cover. “You’ll just have to read it, I guess.”

“ _Or_ I could convince you to tell me,” Blanche says, grinning that devious little smile, the one that can bring a legion of men to their knees. But Dorothy doubles down on her resolve. She tucks the book under the blanket, and much to her surprise, finds herself smiling in return. 


End file.
